Re: Stories in the vein of At The Mountains Of Madness
Posted by:
Kipling (IP Logged)
Date: 4 March, 2022 12:43PM
Platypus Wrote:
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> Arctic/Antarctic Horror
>
> - THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM (1838), novel
> by Poe. The antarctic section is only at the end,
> but of course it helped inspire HPL's story.
> - "The Captain of the Polestar" (1885), by Arthur
> Conan Doyle.
> - THE PURPLE CLOUD (1901), novel by M.P. Shiel.
> The arctic section is only at the beginning, but
> is quite surreal.
> - "The Arctic Death" (1927), by Willford Allen.
> - "In Amundsen's Tent" (1928), by John Martin
> Leahy. Early treatment of the idea of an
> antarctic alien so horrible it makes men mad.
> - "The Ice-Demon" (1933), by Clark Ashton Smith.
> - AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS (1936), short Novel
> by H.P. Lovecraft.
> - "Who Goes There?" (1938), short story by John W.
> Campbell, Jr. -- possibly inspired by HPL's idea
> of an antarctic shoggoth. Basis for THE THING.
> - "The Coming of the White Worm" (1941), by Clark
> Ashton Smith.
> - "The Thing from the Barrens" (1945), short story
> by Jim Kjelgaard. Weird creature from the arctic
> extremes of North America.
> - "The Polar Vortex" (1946), short story by
> Malcolm Ferguson. Student driven mad in a
> Antarctic observatory.
With regard to Shiel's novel The Purple Cloud, there is a shorter, original version which is better than the overly discursive version Shiel wrote for book publication. He also expanded another early serialized novel, The Empress of the Earth (retitled The Yellow Danger), and, late in his career, The Lord of the Sea was revised and republished. Again, the originals are reputedly better, but I only speak from experience in the case of The Purple Cloud-- the serial versions of The Empress of the Earth and The Purple Cloud can be found in Works of M.P. Shiel Vol. I (Reynolds Morse Foundation 1979).
jkh